Dangerous Games
by Ayame-chan
Summary: Seven years post Meteor, peace begins to settle in. Fate intervenes. A man looking for redemption runs into a young woman who reminds him of his lost love. A Sephiroth clone is given a second chance, & a second life. And a dead man comes back to life. R/R
1. Prologue: Parting Ways

Prologue ~ Parting Ways

A young man gazed over the landscape from above, his blue-green eyes lost in thought. They had been able to defeat Sephiroth and witness the destruction of Meteor at the cost of countless of lives. The man sighed at the thought, not wanting to believe that there were still people occupying the slums of Midgar when Meteor struck. He didn't want to believe a new burden on his shoulders took over the old one.

"Cloud?" a familiar voice asked.

He turned around at the call of his name, giving the woman before him a weak smile. Tifa Lockheart was perhaps the only person he showed his true feelings to even if they were barely called friends when they were children. Cloud let the others think that he was the strong, cocky leader that he had appeared to be, but in actuality he didn't ask to be leader. Aeris had given the suggestion and the others simply agreed, but he hated being the leader and the only person who saw that was Tifa.

He extended his arm towards her, and she hesitantly took it, putting on her best smile. He wrapped his arm around her slim, bare waist and held her close to him, inhaling in the sweet scent of her hair as they both looked over the desert landscape on the Highwind.

"What is it, Tifa?" he murmured through her hair.

Tifa was fighting back down a blush as she slowly leaned against him. Cloud was being utterly romantic towards her; something that she had been dreaming of since the day he had left Nibelheim seven years before. However, everything was still a bit new to her. Her own thoughts were swirling around her at their closeness, almost forgetting why she came up here.

"Um...everybody..." she slowly began. "Everybody wants to see you." She closed her eyes for a moment as the remnants of the night before set out into the Northern Crater flashed before her. **_Only you..._** She opened them again, looking up at Cloud. "I think it's about where we should go."

Cloud chuckled in amusement, a low rumble in his throat. "I'm supposed to know? Geez, am I psychic or something?"

Tifa joined in the laughter, her smile widening into a grin. She snuggled closer to him to hide the smile. "I guess so."

Cloud sighed in defeat as he loosened his embrace. "Tifa...so many people were still there."

She remained silent for a moment before replying, "Cloud, there was nothing we could do about it. Like you said before, we did all we could."

He nodded at her response, the words ringing true in his head. He knew that they did all they could, but he still needed to hear them. With some more thought and a last look at Midgar, he said to Tifa,

"Let's go see the others."

inside the Highwind

Cloud and Tifa entered in the cockpit where everybody gathered, stopping their own conversations as the young couple entered. Barret suppressed a grin that was creeping to his face as they quickly split physical contact and blushed when everyone stared at them. He liked seeing the two together, and he especially liked seeing them happy. The two were like stubborn children not wanting to admit that they liked each other. Sometimes it would just drive him nuts when he was with them. Hell, if he didn't coax Tifa that time they were in Gold Saucer to ask Cloud out, then they would be still in square one.

"Yo, Cloud, where to now?" he asked.

The younger man shrugged, scratching the back of his head. "....Our job's done here; there's nothing else to do but part ways and keep the friendships that we've made. I'm sure you guys want to go back home and see if everything's still the same, right?"

One by one, each person nodded with the exception of Vincent. He stood in his usual spot towards the back, his eyes closed. At first Cloud thought that the man was sleeping, for he did fight against Bizarro and Final Sephiroth with him and Tifa, but he had opened his eyes and slowly nodded back at him. Cloud inwardly sighed; sometimes he didn't understand the man.

"Okay, then it's settled," Cloud announced at the gang and looked at Cid. "Do you think you can drop us off, Cid?"

The older man scoffed at him. "Shiiiiet, do you gotta ask?"

Wutai area

The first person to be dropped off was Yuffie, which was only right because she knew that the others didn't want her to steal their materia. That was fine by her. She had enough of her own materia to be happy with.

Yuffie paused in her stride as she neared her father's house. _Gawd, what if he wants ALL of my materia?_ Her hands unconsciously went down to the pouch where her unused materia lay. Some of it was her own that were replicas of the originals she had equipped on while the others were the ones that Cloud had graciously given to her because he and the others had no use for them.

"Well, if that old man wants them, then he ain't gonna get what he wants," she said to herself and turned away, heading for her own home.

Cosmo Canyon

The next to be dropped off was RedXII or rather Nanaki now. As he wearily climbed up the steps, the guard at the entrance beamed with delight.

"Nanaki, welcome back!" the guard greeted.

Thoughts swirled in his mind, the words of Bugenhagen coming back. Nanaki wanted to protect Cosmo Canyon at all cots, just like his parents had done. However, he knew that his grandfather wanted him to explore the world, experience new cultures.

Yet Cosmo Canyon was his home.

Nanaki smiled at the guard, "I'm home."

Corel Area

Vincent quickly scaled across the Corel Mountains with little effort. He knew where he wanted to go; it was just impossible to land the Highwind there. He had to see her, tell the truth about her son. And...he wanted to apologize for abandoning her. Otherwise his heart would not be at peace.

Vincent paused in his climb to shoot down a Nibel wolf that was about to attack him with the Death Penalty. As he gazed at the dead creature's body in the distance, he wondered to himself why the creature strayed off from its pack. _He is different like I am_, he thought as his cloak swirled about in the wind. His metallic arm reflected off the sun's rays as it peered out from the cloak, a constant reminder of who he really was: a monster. Shaking his head, Vincent continued along his way to the place where his past remained waiting for his return before it could disappear forever.

Lucrecia.

Highwind

As he and Tifa watched the others depart, Cloud began to wonder to himself where he would go. Wherever he would go, he knew that Tifa would follow. He could go and try to buy the villa in Costa Del Sol, but he always hated the warm weather no matter what others said. The weather reminded him too much of the temperature of Mako energy and the time he had spent in the Mako chambers at the Shinra Mansion .

"Hey, Cloud, where should we go?" Tifa asked him in her typically soft voice. It was always strange to him that she had a soft, gentle voice when she could practically pummel any guy that would try to take advantage of her. A smile crept to his face as an idea came to him.

"Nibelheim. We should go back to Nibelheim."

Tifa cocked her head to the side, confused. "Back to our hometown?"

Cloud nodded. "I doubt that those Shinra employees would hide in their masks anymore. Besides, it's our home. We can always rebuild."

"So you two lovebirds wanna go back to Nibelheim?" Cid shouted, grinning maniacally at the comment.

Cloud and Tifa's faces turned a beet red before Cloud could coherently nod at the pilot. He could hear some of the crew and Barret snicker in the background. 

Scratching the back of his head and holding Tifa's hand, he said, "Uh...yeah, Cid. Next time, don't shout it out to the world."

Tifa smiled to herself as she gazed out the Highwind, thinking about the future ahead of them. Cloud made a surprising decision to return back to the small town where they both grew up in, yet she knew deep inside why. He wanted to make amends and start from the beginning.

_Only you..._she thought to herself as she rested her head on his shoulder.

Kalm

"Ow, Daddy! Your whiskers hurt!"

"But Daddy missed you so much, honey," Barret reasoned with his "daughter", Marlene. "You've gotten bigger since the last time I saw you."

Indeed the nine year old little girl had grown a bit taller since the last time he saw her. Barret noted to himself that Marlene was beginning to look like her mother everyday, her real mother that is. A twinge of pain stung his heart as he remembered Dyne's words to him before he jumped off the cliff. **My hands are too stained with blood.**

His own hands, too, were stained with blood but Barret was determined to take care of his best friend's daughter until she was old enough to go on her own. It was promise that he vowed to fulfill to his dead friend, at least to redeem himself of his own sins.

Reeve stepped out of the clock tower, his duty done. He had been able to take care of the little girl and help the others through his Cait Sith body. Even though he knew that everyone distrusted him, Reeve would always remember Aeris' words to be strong. He was glad that she accepted him fro the way he was. Reeve sighed to himself as he entered in the pub, taking one of the few empty seats the remained and asked for a beer. Shinra was finished which meant that he was out of a job. He could go look for another one, but he was afraid to be rejected due to his background. Heaving out another sigh, Reeve guessed that he would try to find the dysfunctional Turks now that Shinra was gone and Tseng rumored to be dead. He wondered to himself it the never-aging man really was dead. He himself saw through Cait Sith's body Tseng's limp form at the corner of the entrance, but he doubted that the man would die so easily.

Tseng spooked the former Shinra executive sometimes. The way that the aloof head Turk remained the same age the sixteen years he had been at Shinra Inc. always mystified him. Reeve didn't believe the rumors of his death. The man couldn't die so easily, even if it WAS Sephiroth who had "killed" him.

Woodlands area

Tseng Chen slumped against another red oak tree as the renewed strength in him died away from his body. His right hand still clutched the wound in his side where Sephiroth's Masamune struck even though the bleeding had stopped. That still didn't mean the pain had ceased. Every move that he made, even blinking, was excruciating. He had managed to escape the destruction of the Temple months before but he had only managed to get halfway through the forest that had surrounded it. Time and time again his strength would fail him, but he knew he could never die. That was his curse.

The trees began to blue around him as his vision began to fail. Tseng was extremely tired. He needed rest, but he needed to get out of here. His sister's ocean blue eyes appeared before him with tears inside.

"I'm sorry," he murmured before he fell into unconsciousness.

A few moments later, a black chocobo appeared, its rider cloaked in black. The cloaked rider got off the creature and walked over to Tseng's unconscious form, gleaming red eyes boring into his body. The rider picked him up effortlessly in its arms and lay him across the chocobo's back. With one single action, the rider got on the bird-like creature and rode away, fading in the trees.

The only remnants that Tseng had left behind was a trail of blood.

AN: Yeah, this is the end of my rather lengthy prologue. I needed to make a background to set off the story or else it would be a tad bit confusing if I started on the first chapter. As you can see from a few scenes, I'm a loyal Cloud/Tifa fan. I respect Cloud/Aeris fans and other misc. pairings with the love triangle, but I have no love for Aeris *ducks the various tomatoes and other misc. veggies* Yet that doesn't mean that I hate her. I do like her to an extent and respect how other Aeris fans feel about here. 

And for some clarification depending on how you treat Tifa throughout the game, Cloud and Tifa's night alone together before entering the Northern Crater varies. If you didn't use her that much, then her reaction would be "did you guys listen" or something similar to that. If you were *really* nice to her (and also got her in the Gold Saucer date), then she will say "you guys SAW" meaning that, well, yeah, something happened that night ^_~. 

Anyhoo, enough rambling from me. You'll get to see why Tseng is technically still alive and just assume that the 13th Sephiroth clone was not found yet because that factor will play a big role in the next chapter whenever I have the time to write it out and put it up ^^. This is my first FF7 fic, btw, so please be nice and R&R if you can!

~Ayame-chan


	2. A Missing Secret

AN: Yeah, first chapter is done! Sorry it took me a while; I just kinda got lost on where to write due to school and all. Well, hope you like it and R/R! Oh yes, I know that the 13th Sephiroth clone was discovered, but that'll be explained in due time ^^.

Chapter One ~ A Missing Secret

"So this is Midgar..."

A woman overlooked the ruins before her, the once bustling city of Midgar that had been the headquarters of Shinra Inc. She was in her early twenties with long, silky black hair and eyes that resembled the blue depths of the ocean. She began to descend the cliff, the harsh winds slapping against her petite frame. She wrapped her white cloak tightly around her as she continued on. After climbing down a few more feet, she jumped off a height that seemed impossible to land alive. However, she was not an ordinary human being. Her feet barely made a sound as they touched the poisoned ground, a light green swirl of Mako dust gathered around her boots. She brushed them off her clothes and drew her daggers, wary of the monsters that inhabited the plain.

It had been two years since Midgar's fall, and many new and frightening creatures had risen from the ruins. They didn't dare let any human inhabit the place and those who had tried exterminating their kind never returned alive. Some of the locals in Kalm had said that the monsters originated from the laboratories of the Shinra building, free from their years of experimentation. Others said that the monsters were new and mutated forms of the originals because of the Mako that had escaped. Their new personas were more relentless, more brutal, more powerful.

However, these creatures were the least of her worries. She was here because of the rumors. She heard about a forgotten man arising from the dead and plotting the Planet's destruction based on a legend. She wanted to make sure that they weren't true.

"Meteor sure did its work," the woman murmured to herself as she sifted through the debris. 

A roar echoed not far below her, distracting her from heading towards the Shinra building. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion as the necklace she wore began to tremble slightly in warning. She patiently waited for the monster to reveal itself, the roars getting closer and louder.

"C'mon, where are you?" she asked, her eyes darting around for the monster.

The ground beneath her shook violently before finally caving in to reveal the monster that lie underneath. The woman jumped in the air, casting a spell that kept her afloat. The monster was a large Behemoth unlike any that existed. Its thick fur was matted with the blood of its victims, yet bits and pieces of its body was a pure light grey. Dark, catlike amber eyes glared at its new prey who had disturbed its sleep. The woman hovered over it, just out of reach of its poisonous blue claws. It lashed out at her, but she easily avoided its attacks, putting away her daggers. They would be ineffective against such a large creature.

As the Behemoth was frustratingly trying to capture the woman, she began to chant in an archaic language, gathering the lifestream together. Warm green streams of the lifestream circled around her body. The Behemoth yowled in pain as it felt its body burning. Its own blood began to seep out of its body from its pores hidden beneath the matted fur, evaporating in the polluted air. When the woman opened her eyes, the monster writhed in pain as the fire within its body engulfed its victim to death. The woman carefully let her levitating spell fade and landed back on solid, stable ground. She glanced back at the Behemoth's charcoal corpse before heading into the abandoned Shinra HQ.

She was completely overwhelmed at the smell even before she entered. Since the building had been abandoned, nobody had bothered to take out the stench of death and blood that lingered. She covered her nose and mouth as she ventured further into the building, resisting the urge to vomit the morning's breakfast. Her eyes cautiously scanned the lobby area, noting the various corpses sprawled about. She came closer to one dead body, again fighting back the sickness that crept to her stomach. The corpse was heavily decayed, but much to her surprise, it was neither human nor monster. She carefully lifted the lid of the thing's eyes, noting the Mako that still lingered inside.

_Man made, _she thought as she stepped over it towards the glass elevator. _The thing was definitely exposed to a high amount of Mako, mutating it. What the heck was Professor Hojo thinking?_

She stepped inside the elevator, quickly closing the door so that she could breathe some fresh air.

"Good thing this has air conditioning," she murmured, sliding in a card key that a former Shinra executive gave her a few months ago. "I hope this still works."

Sure enough, the electricity of the Shinra headquarters was still functional, running on its back up generators for the past two years. The woman took this time in the elevator to look outside, seeing the full extent of damage that Meteor dealt upon the polluted city two years ago. She began to remember her brother and his vow to take vengeance upon Shinra Inc., after they destroyed their home. She sighed and shook her head, brushing away the painful memories as the elevator paused at the sixty-seventh floor. Surprised that it stopped, the woman pressed the "up" button, but the elevator would not respond. She tried a various other amount of buttons, but it seemed that the electricity finally died. She banged her fist against the controls in frustration.

"Damn elevator," she muttered.

Heaving a great sigh, she reluctantly entered the sixty-seventh floor. This was the floor where the science department mainly worked as well as the floor above. The woman carefully made her way through the floor, covering her nose and mouth from the Mako haze and the stench of death that hovered on the floor. It was dark and because of the Mako fog, it was also very hard to see. The woman would once in a while cast a "light" spell, clearing some of the fog around her.

She blindly made her way to the entrance of the laboratory when she heard the familiar hiss of a seal opening. Her hand instinctively went to the pouch where her daggers lay, and she waited. Her eyes frantically looked around for the source of the noise and finally beckoned her legs to move.

Her magic was of no use in here. There was too much Mako still around. The woman was afraid that if she cast any of her more powerful spells, it would probably cause a bad reaction with the Mako around and make the building explode. She continued to search for the source of the sound when another hiss echoed to the right of her. She sharply turned in that direction, noticing a Mako mist seeping out behind the broken JENOVA chamber. The woman looked around for a place to enter, hearing a heavy thud coming from the same area. She managed to find a small opening behind the chamber where the mist originated and carefully crawled through, not even bothering to pull back the loose strands of hair that stuck to her face because of the heat that the Mako steam gave out.

She finally managed to squeeze through the hole and entered a hidden room no bigger than a medium-sized closet. What she saw inside shocked her.

"My God..." she murmured as she scrambled to the body lying on the ground.

The body was a boy of around twelve years or so, maybe younger, the woman guessed. He had long, black hair that seemed to be graying at every second that passed. His lean, muscular body was somewhat unusual to a boy his age, but the woman paid no attention to it. She took off her clock and wrapped it around his naked, shivering body to keep him warm. The boy continued to shiver and coughed. He tried to open his eyes, but it was as if he had never used the muscles before. The woman tried to comfort him, looking around for an exit.

_It's impossible to go back the way I came. The entrance is too narrow for the both of us,_ she thought. _I've got to find another way out and fast. This kid's burning up!_

The boy coughed again, but he had coughed up some Mako as well. The woman tried to keep him still as he continued to cough and whispered a cure spell to calm his spasms. She lied him down on the metal floor; his shivering had stopped.

"Hold on for a minute, okay?" she said to him even though she knew that the boy probably didn't understand what she was saying.

"Uh...agh..." was his reply as he still tried to open his eyes.

The woman lightly knocked on the walls of the small room, hoping that there was an area where it would be hollow. It was fairly dark, with the exception of the dim light that the Mako chamber that the boy apparently came from emitted, so she couldn't see clearly. As her hopes were beginning to dwindle, her ears caught the hollow sound echoing back at her. She stepped away from the wall and took out a grenade from her sack, unhooking the pin with her teeth. She tossed the grenade at the wall, its exit leading her back to the laboratory. She quickly returned to the boy and carried him out of the room, finding her way out of the Shinra building.

Kalm Inn

"Naoko? Naoko, wake up."

The woman stirred from her sleep at the call of her name, opening her eyes. Her friend greeted her with a comforting smile.

"Hey, are you okay?" she asked.

Naoko stretched out her body in the uncomfortable chair she had slept in. She yawned and rubbed the sleep away from her eyes, glancing at her friend who had taken a seat next to her.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired," Naoko replied, rotating her neck to get out the kinks. "How's the kid?"

"Well, he's suffering from a severe dose of Mako poisoning," her friend informed. "I'm actually surprised that he's alive. Any kid at his age would be dead on the spot with the kind of Mako exposure you described to me."

"But is he going to be okay?" Naoko asked. "Kyo, you don't have to hide the details from me."

Kyo sighed, realizing that she could not hide from her friend. "Well, from a doctor's perspective, he's responding surprisingly well to the antidotes I've given him. He should survive unless his body somehow gets a bad reaction because of all the substances he has in his body. Personally, though, I think he would be better off dead."

"What?!?" Naoko exclaimed, jumping out of her seat. "Why?"

"Don't get the wrong idea, Naoko," Kyo reassured her. "I know that you want to help this kid, but I'm starting to believe the rumors that the townspeople are spreading. Every time I look at him, he's starting to look more and more like a miniature version of Sephiroth."

Naoko sighed and strode over to the window, brushing back her hair. Her muscles were still a bit sore from the trip to Midgar barely a day before. Her arms leaned against the window sill as she looked out at the quiet town. 

"So what if he looks like him?" she asked more to herself than to her redheaded friend. Then she added a bit more quietly, "It's not his fault. He has no choice in what he looks like."

Kalm Inn ~ room

The boy tossed and turned in his bed as his nightmare continued to plague him.

**It's useless to resist them, boy.**

"...No....." he cried mournfully in his sleep.

**When the time comes, you will have to take their place.**

He vehemently shook his head. "No, I won't."

**You can't hide from fate. You'll follow these orders whether you like it or not.**

"....I...won't listen to you...."

**Accept your fate, boy.**

"NO! I'M NOT GOING TO BE HIM!!!"

The boy sat upright in his bed, gasping for air. He slowly lowered his arm stretched out in front of him back down to his side and tried to get his breathing back to normal, closing his eyes.

"It was a dream, just a dream," he kept on repeating to himself.

He opened his eyes and stared at his reflection in the mirror on the dresser a few feet in front of him, surprised to find himself clothed in a large white dress shirt and loose black pants. The boy's face twisted in disgust at the smell of alcohol that reeked on his clothes, figuring that they probably were stolen from a drunk. He looked around the room curiously as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. A vague blur of the past events flashed by in his mind. _What happened? Where am I?_

"Oh my gosh! You're awake?!?"

The boy sharply turned his head in the direction of the voice only to be blinded by the light from the doorway. "Agh..."

Naoko, noticing his sensitivity to light, quickly shut the door behind her as Kyo rushed towards the bed. The first thing that she did was take his temperature, and to her surprise, it had gone down considerably.

"You broke your fever already!" she exclaimed. "I didn't expect that you would recover so fast."

"Huh? What?" the boy asked, confused at the statement that the red head in front of him was saying. "Who are you?"

Naoko turned to get a good look at him, a bit shocked to see that his eyes were a bright green that glowed softly in the dark. _That glow...those are Mako eyes..._

"My name's Naoko Rofel," Naoko introduced herself to the boy. "I was..." She hesitated for a second. _Should I tell him the truth or not? The poor kid looks so confused. _"Um, I was in Midgar and...found you there."

"Mid...gar?" the boy repeated slowly, focusing his attention to Naoko while Kyo continued to do the typical doctor check up. "I was in Midgar?"

Naoko nodded as she came closer to the bed. The boy's hair was completely silver now. The glow that his eyes emitted in the dark was a bit unsettling to her; it reminded her too much of her own brother's eyes. "Yeah...you were...unconscious, so I brought you back here."

She gestured at Kyo who was now in the process of testing his blood pressure. "That's my friend, Kyo. She was the only doctor who would take an emergency so late at night yesterday, and she was able to cure you of Mako poisoning."

"Mako poisoning?"

"Well, I didn't exactly _cure_ you," Kyo corrected. "I merely just gave you a whole mess of remedies and vials of elixirs since there really isn't a cure to Mako poisoning. Mako poisoning happens when you're exposed to a whole lot of Mako energy at one time. Your body basically goes haywire, to the point where you don't even realize who you are. It's very rare for people exposed to a high level of Mako like you did to survive. I only heard about one successful case around two years ago." She then pressed a button on the blood pressure monitor. "Now don't move for a few seconds...yeah, like that. Okay, it's done." She took off the cuff on his arm. "I'm amazed. You're perfectly fine."

The boy was looking at Kyo all this time, but she seemed unwilling to look at him. She kept herself busy putting away the monitor. Inwardly he frowned, not quite sure why the woman wouldn't make eye contact with him. However, he didn't think much of it when Naoko took a seat next to his bed.

"Do you remember anything that happened to you? Anything at all?" she asked with extreme concern.

The boy looked at her, feeling at ease at her general interest. He pondered for a moment about her question then shook his head as his mind came to a blank. 

"....No," he quietly replied. "Nothing at all."

Naoko cocked her head, recognizing the look of loneliness in his eyes. "Not even your name?"

"....My name?" the boy repeated as he though long and hard on the question. "My name..." he said a bit more quietly and shook his head as his mind came to a blank again. "I....don't remember."

"It's typical," Kyo interrupted as she continued to put away her medical belongings. "Victims of Mako poisoning tend to get amnesia a lot. Most of the time, those memories they once had are forever lost."

Naoko gave a look of annoyance at her friend because of the curtness in her voice, but she looked back at the boy, no longer unsettled by the Mako glow in his eyes. She gave him a soft smile. "So you don't remember, huh?"

The boy shook his head. Naoko's smile grew wider and stood up. "Okay...then we need to make up a name for you. Let's see..." She thought for a moment when her brother's face flashed in her mind. "....Seth. Your name is going to be Seth. And, uh, you can be my little brother."

"Naoko!" Kyo protested.

Naoko looked at her friend. "What?"

"Are you _sure_ what you're about to do? Letting him go with you on your journeys when he looks like the very man who had tried to destroy the Planet two years ago?" Kyo argued. "Don't you realize how difficult it's going to be to deal with the people in practically ANY town? The scars haven't healed yet and he's going to keep those scars strong if he tries to go out in public."

"So what? I'm not just going to leave him here by himself," Naoko reasoned. "He'll be in the exact same situation, maybe even worse. Besides, I don't mind. It's nice to have company around when you're traveling, right, Seth?"

The boy blinked a few times in confusion at the sound of his newly appointed name before giving a smile smile and nod in return.

"Okay, then it's settled. I'll get you some new clothes since God forbid you can stand the smell," Naoko said. "And I'll get you something to eat; you probably haven't eaten anything in a while. C'mon, Kyo, let's go."

Kyo reluctantly left the room, giving one last, detached glance at Seth. Naoko followed her and was halfway through the doorway when Seth called her.

"Um...Naoko?" he meekly asked.

She turned around, keeping the light to a minimum. "Hm?" 

"Uh..." Seth scratched the back of his head. "Thank you. For helping me, I mean."

Naoko smiled brightly at him. "Hey, we all have to help one another. And you can just call me 'Sis'. We're family, right?"

Seth returned her smile, accepted. "Right. Thanks...Sis."

Naoko nodded, still smiling, before closing the door behind her. Kyo stood at the end of the hallway, waiting for her. Her grey eyes were gravely serious as Naoko walked lightly down the hallway.

"You're serious, aren't you?" she said to her.

Naoko nodded, just as serious. "Of course, I always am."

"That alibi isn't going to convince a lot of people, you know."

"I'm well aware of that, but it's better than nothing. Besides, he's like us, Kyo. He's different."

Kyo heaved out a sigh. "I know....but we don't look like Sephiroth."

"But we can change that."

"What do you mean?"

"I need a pair of scissors and a comb. And some new clothes for him. If he looks too much like Sephiroth, then we'll change his physical appearance a little bit."

the next day

Naoko and Seth were packing up their gold chocobos with supplies early the next morning where the majority of Kalm was still fast asleep. Seth was decked out in new attire; his stolen clothing a day ago were thrown in the trash. He was now wearing a pair of black jeans, a white tank, a denim jacket, and a pair of heavy duty black boots that were bought by Naoko the night before. His hair was cut to about shoulder length and neatly tied back in a short ponytail. Covering all of this was a black cloak that Kyo had personally given to him. He began to remember her last words, realizing that she was not the hypocritical and detached doctor she seemed.

"Whatever you do, wear this cloak in the villages and towns that Naoko warns you about," she had told him. "Don't speak to anybody, nevertheless take off your hood to reveal your face. The people will mistake you for someone else if you do, even if you're only just a kid. Just be careful, okay?"

He silently nodded to himself to abide by her words as he set the last pack on the birdlike creature and hopped on its back, looking to see if his "sister" was ready. Naoko was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing for the past two days for her time was limited. Her white cloak had been washed, covering the worn and faded colors of her tanktop and jeans. However, despite the condition of her clothing, she did manage to keep herself clean. Her long, silky black hair was tied back in a loose braid, its health shining off from the sun's rays. Seth silently admired her beauty, wondering why she hid herself under the cloak when there seemed to be nothing wrong with her, unlike him.

Naoko soon finished stacking the last of her belongings and hopped on her chocobo. She met Seth's quiet gaze.

"Ready?"

He nodded.

"All right, let's go!"

She gently coaxed her chocobo forward, and it happily went into a quick trot. Seth whistled for his chocobo to follow, and the two left Kalm to look ahead on adventures to come. 

A figure stepped out of the shadows, watching the two leave. His dark eyes fixed on Naoko, then on Seth. He smiled evilly to himself.

"The thirteenth clone," he whispered in a raspy voice before walking back into the shadows.


End file.
